'The Auld Triangle'

It's been a completely Irish day weather-wise, with alternating bright sunshine and torrential rain in fifteen-minute cycles. However, spirits seemed pretty good when I got Croke Park and business was going on very much as usual. The band came in for sound check, prior to which we sat in the dressing room for a while looking at the possible set-lists which they could play over the three nights here. I've mentioned before that this tour's quantity of available, rehearsed material is completely unprecedented which makes planning set lists a joy though still requiring an amount of mental gymnastics to find suitable juxtapositions.

Having made a decision on sets for nights 1 and 2 (all bets are off for night 3 - I'm pushing for a new trio of songs, October into White As Snow into New Year's Day but we'll see how that goes), Bono and Edge were playing with ideas for other appropriate elements to throw into a hometown gig. 'Dirty Old Town'? (bit obvious), 'The Boys Are Back In Town'? (spare us), The Corrs 'We Are So Young'? (seemed like a funny idea for five minutes). They settled on 'The Auld Triangle', which Bono then sang acapella in the dressing room to find a suitable key. It's been a while since I’ve experienced Bono singing at full tilt in a small room, at a distance of approximately two feet. I'd completely forgotten the implausible volume of sound which he is capable of producing, even without the world's largest P.A. system. I felt like I wanted to look behind him to see where the speaker was plugged in.

Due to Dublin's close geographical proximity to the Arctic circle, it is famously Very Not Dark when you do outdoor shows here and altering the course of nature is one string that not even U2 can pull. However, being a known quantity I design with this in mind and this show (unlike, say, ZooTV) can quite comfortably handle opening in daylight. It's fair to say that the Not Darkness went on for longer than I would have liked but it clearly didn't affect the outcome of the evening as the place completely went off. Oh, and The Auld Triangle turned out to be just the ticket.

After the show the traffic was rammed outside so along with some of the video crew I opted for walking home. I went to the crew hotel first and spent a second evening hanging out in the 'losers lounge' with some of our guys prior to wandering on back to the Clarence. My room is facing Temple Bar and frankly, as far as the noise level went, I may as well have bedded down in the bar across the street. I didn't get to bed til about 3am, at which point the U2 covers band which was playing in the corner of my room was still going at it full tilt. Within half an hour (I kid you not) they had played With or Without You three times and One twice. And really not that well. Thank god for my 40db moulded earplugs...

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COMMENTS

Ah, I hope that the band revisit the idea of the October-White as Snow-New Year's Day sequence. It would be awesome to hear those three songs in that order.

Finglasfollower

20 August, 2009

Cardiff Here I come...

Went to all 3 of the Dublin gigs which of course were amazing and it is mine and their home town it is even more special to catch them playing here.
I fly to Cardiff tomorrow to catch the boys on the last night of their European Tour..and then Im off to Boston in September to take in some of the magic statestide.
Am very excited altogehter...
Finglas Follower
(dedicated U2 fan for over 25 years)

Within the bands entourage (certainly by comparison to the crews clockwork scheduling) travel departure times are often a little loose. This morning was especially so, due to three contradictory memos which had been emailed out last night and this morning.

There was a 6.30pm conference call arranged between Bono (Dublin), The Edge (Los Angeles), Steve Matthews (London) and myself (also London) to blow the cobwebs off our brains and discuss the reincarnation of the Vertigo Tour.

I was planning on resurrecting the tour diary today, being the day we were scheduled to fly to Auckland for the load-in tomorrow. However, its now old news that the remainder of the tour dates have been postponed, so Im not going anywhere further than the corner cafe. Its been a very weird week indeed - much akin to driving into a wall.